It’s healthcare control, pure and simple, and we’re close to enslaving ourselves with the best of intentions. Here’s how. First we must accept the false dilemma that there are only two options available: either you want government controlled healthcare for those who can’t afford it, or you want them to die in the streets so you can test the shocks on your new Lincoln Navigator. Once the argument is presented nearly that starkly, government care or death, the passionate cry out for government care partly because they genuinely care about the disadvantaged, and partly because they’ve allowed themselves to be boxed in by the false dilemma here mentioned.The problem is that the more government intrudes into the market, the more it distorts the market and denies goods and services to its citizens. This ranges from the inconvenience of being put on a waiting list to receive a coupon for a digital converter box (which you more than paid for in taxes) in America, or being put on a waiting list to receive life-saving care in a British hospital which is sometimes tantamount to a death sentence. Such conditions occur when citizens hope the government can “do something” about the costs of a given item, in this case, healthcare. Government price controls are at least as old as the Law of Hammurabi, and so are the results. Price ceilings make it difficult for producers to earn back what they’ve invested, and so they may go out of business. Rent controls often force landlords to board up their deteriorating property or sell it off to a developer to prevent losses that prevent them from keeping up their property. The result of compassionate legislation to control rent is less housing available for those in need. Price floors put products out of reach of consumers and cause surpluses to accumulate which few can access. In an effort to help farmers during the Depression, FDR instituted price floors in the hope of keeping farmers afloat. The result was food stores that went unpurchased while crops were deliberately destroyed to drive up prices.

In short, food became less available while Americans were going hungry. Governments can’t control costs; they can only control prices in such a way that a producer may be forced out of business. In the case of government healthcare control, this would translate into not only less healthcare for fewer Americans, but also may mean new drugs and medical technologies never being made or discovered. Medical progress will be slowed, maybe even stopped.Why is this the case? To begin with, it’s important to realize that the economy is the sum total of billions of decisions being made to buy or not to buy at any given moment. No government can adequately track that much information, much less attempt to efficiently control it. But when government limits itself to the protection of life, liberty, and property, and leaves producers free to market what consumers want, then more is available more affordably to more people. This is the case with cell phones and veterinary care, where there is no crisis or shortage, and would be true of healthcare if the government began to disentangle itself from it.But healthcare is a right! Shouldn’t the government guarantee healthcare to all its citizens!?

Well, here’s the problem: it can’t. Yes, on paper it could guarantee healthcare to all, but would instantly set about regulating it to prevent “waste” which means denying expenditures on procedures bureaucrats disapprove of. This leads us to the extraordinary danger of the government controlled healthcare or death for the disadvantaged dilemma. Out of compassion, genuine compassion, we are led to sell away the freedom of others! There are poor people who can’t help themselves, we say, so they must be delivered mind, body, and ultimately soul to the government system which is the only entity that could or would take care of them. Thus we sell away our fellow citizens by voting for those who have convinced us that ownership of the dependent is compassion. Of course, we sell ourselves at the same time by vainly imagining that it’s the “others” who will be dependent on government. How do we sell ourselves? We have our property plundered by the government to be poured into gross mis-administration which leads to the denial of more healthcare for more people, even those we sold out when we thought we were helping them. This is a step toward totalitarianism as we feed a growing government with a growing appetite for more.

Trusting government as our lord and savior, we sacrifice to it our properties, our liberties, and our lives in hope that now it will excel in caring for us. The only thing totalitarian governments excel in is filling mass graves.But maybe I’m overstating the case. If you think so, then I have some questions for you:Why is it that those legislators who wish to impose government healthcare control on us exempt themselves from it?While we are faulted for being the only industrialized nation in the world without healthcare, why do so many from other industrialized nations with nationalized healthcare come here for treatment?Do Canada and Mexico have an immigration problem with Americans pouring across their borders? If not, why?Who envies the quality of healthcare available in Britain or in Michael Moore’s adored Cuban system?

Why do we trust the Medicare system that denies nearly twice as many claims as occurs on average in the private sector, especially when many doctors don't accept it because of the restrictions and penalties involved?

So, what’s the solution? I’ve already given away the answer, and I’ll say it again - when government limits itself to the protection of life, liberty, and property, and leaves producers free to market what consumers want, then more is available more affordably to more people. The reason the government or death dilemma is false is that even now other options exist. I have a job that pays insurance now, but for many years I was covered by an affordable insurance co-op that paid faithfully and provided for catastrophic care if needed. When people are free, free to choose and free to spend their money, creative solutions that bring down both costs and prices begin to blossom. What’s more, money is freed for research and development of life-saving and quality enhancing medications and procedures. Freedom is what brought us the good we see so far, and freedom, if allowed, is what will ultimately carry us ahead into the future.

[justify]Forgive me, Comrade Cerebellum Under Glass, but I've been troubled with, well, thoughts. I read Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics and it seemed, as I, uh, thought about it, that it made more sense than the Communist Manifesto and seemed to approximate the way things really happen.[/justify][justify]But I'm afraid it's worse than that. You see, I've also read the Bible and I believe in the God revealed in it![/justify][justify]I must have gone mad to post these things publicly. I'm reaching for the shovel. I can already feel the cold wind blowing through the boxcar and the blisters forming on my hands.[/justify]

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology. ~ Ayn Rand

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